Amazon Wish List as "Gimme!" Anecdote

A few months ago we changed our satellite TV programming to cut back on the bill, which eliminated a few beloved kid channels.  We discovered PBS Kids as a result.  Excellent!  

An unexpected but welcome result of this change was the elimination of kid-targeting commercials.  Well, almost.  I can always tell when it is Saturday morning because my girls start hawking the virtues of the Aluma Wallet.

What's worse is the unending barrage, with each Saturday morning network TV commercial, of the "Mom, I want that!  Can I have it?"  For five minutes at a time I cannot speak or think in complete sentences due to the interruptions.  And the cries of "gimme" really get me.

What to do, what to do.  Besides continually lecturing them on how "things" are not really so important.  I seem to be less persuasive than the commercials, but I will be more persistent.  And now I have devised a strategy.

Since my girls are computer savvy, I taught them how to use the Amazon "Add to Wishlist" function.  I have "Add to Wishlist" set up on our browser's bookmarks bar.  The girls simply navigate to a page that has the product on it that they want, click "Add to Wishlist", select their name from the list of wish lists (since there are six of us), and that's that.

Now when I hear "Mom, can I have that?" my response is simply "Add it to your wish list."  This works for requests sparked by TV commercials, mail catalogs, and in-store browsing.  The girls have 30 minutes of computer time daily, so whatever they remember to add during that time has to suffice.  Not that this has been an issue.  Yellow currently has 84 items on her list; Pink has 110.  

Now, just because something is on their wish list does not mean it will become theirs.  These are items that the girls can use their own money to buy, and ideas for relatives and even Santa.

What the wish list does buy is some peace and quiet for me.  And that is priceless!

What approach do you take when faced with chants of "I want, I want"?

Princess Crown Stand

Our eldest, Yellow, is pretty darn creative.  Yesterday her big idea was to set up a princess crown stand, in the manner of a lemonade stand.  I am generally against lemonade stands, as I think that the neighbors are guilted in to buying something, rather than genuinely wanting a drink prepared by a 7YO.

But this was different.  Yellow was making crowns so that "all the girls can be princesses," and she was giving them away for free.  <3

Yellow explains her plan

Yellow did almost all of it on her own: she made the crowns, found a big box to keep them in, created a sign for her stand and attached it to another big box, and then she handed out instruments to her sisters so they could make "beautiful music" to attract attention to the crown stand.  All I did was haul out a small table and snap pics.

Lots of crowns

"Come get a prinses hat fore free you can dekrat it", or in other words:
Come get a princess hat for free.  You can decorate it.

Making "beautiful music" to attract potential princesses

The girls, waiting to give away crowns

What is your experience with lemonade (or other) stands?

Unintentional Invitation to Play: Color Me a Rainbow

I admire and am inspired by The Imagination Tree's Invitations to Play.  I've been meaning to start these up.  Turns out I created an unintentional invitation to play, of sorts.  I'll explain.

I may have a touch of OCD.  Last night before bed I found myself sorting our crayon box into the different colors - I thought we were low on red crayons, and I wanted to verify it, that's all.  And we do have only one red and two pink crayons, in a sea of silver, pale flesh and white crayons.

After sorting the crayons I returned them to the crayon box, neatly, in almost rainbow order.  I couldn't help myself.  The thought of tossing them in willy nilly made me uncomfortable.

This is what the crayon box looked like even after the girls used it

This morning my two older girls pulled out the crayons to color (I think it was already 6:45 AM *yawn*).  They both drew forms of rainbows.  Too funny!